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Defeats are orphans and very educative. Most defeats are, in fact, manifestation of erroneous judgments or equipment failure, or a combinations of the two. In case the defeats are of military force application then the costs are very high. The United Kingdom’s (UK) military missions and the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan can be classified as failures, if not outright defeats, and have thrown up significant lessons about its higher defence management.

The book, A Rock between Hard Places, is the result of research carried out by K.B. Harpviken and S. Tadjbakhsh, independently and jointly, with encouragement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway. In this book, the authors have examined the events unfolding in Afghanistan from a regional perspective up to 2015, set against the backdrop of the scheduled withdrawal of the United States (US)-led military alliance.

What to make of the combination of Trump’s missile strikes in Syria, changes of mind about China and Russia, warnings to North Korea, signals about scaling up military presence in Afghanistan, and outreach to Turkey?

Given the advertisement surrounding the use of MOAB, it is possible that the Trump administration is signalling to its adversaries the very lethal weapons in its arsenal and its willingness to use them.

For the last 15 years, the war in Afghanistan has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and the United States has sent thousands of troops and spent billions of dollars supporting strategies that have been unable to curtail the violence in the country. In addition to deploying over 130,000 troops from 51 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and its partner nations, the United States alone spent over $686 billion in the ‘Afghan war’.

War and State-Building in Afghanistan deals with one of South Asia’s most turbulent states, Afghanistan, and its socio-political and military conditions. This book also traces the processes that have shaped the geopolitics of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been occupied by the Mughals, British, Soviets, Americans and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The book looks at their efforts at counter-insurgency (COIN) operations in the last five centuries ranging from 1520 to 2012.

This book makes a modest attempt to contribute to the ongoing debate on future challenges for Afghanistan as the largest ever coalition of Western forces prepares to withdraw. It seeks to examine key political developments within Afghanistan over the last one decade in response to the US-led Western military and political intervention.

Shifting the centre of gravity of fighting from their traditional strongholds in the South to the northern parts of Afghanistan in this operation is indicative of the Taliban’s shift in focus to other regions that are also in the al Qaeda’s radar.